


Luminous

by inelegantly (Lir)



Series: SWAG 2016 Fills [4]
Category: Ookiku Furikabutte | Big Windup!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Android Mihashi, Developing Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mechanic Abe, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 16:44:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5878123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lir/pseuds/inelegantly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abe is a mechanic specializing in androids. Mihashi is a small, malfunctioning robot he happens to take in. They raise the question of whether Abe can, and should, fix the parts of Mihashi that are broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Luminous

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt this story is written from was: "SOOOOO Abe is a mechanic/inventor/whatever and Mihashi is a shy, flustered malfunctioning robot.  
> Maybe Abe is Mihashi's creator? Or maybe Mihashi wanders into Abe's shop one day who know  
> Just wow this and with robo dicks wow please and thank"
> 
> I really love robots and the idea of _fixing_ things, so this prompt called to me like none other. However, if the rating wasn't enough of an indication, I didn't remotely take a crack at the "robo dicks" part of the premise. Maybe this version of Abe and Mihashi work up to that in the future, but within the moment this fic focuses on, their relationship is fledgling and new.

-

As he's closing up shop for the day, Abe pauses to turn the hand crank by the front windows, lowering the partition and closing the metal slats until there's only just space enough between them for the honey-golden light of the setting sun to slant in through the blinds. 

It's enough that customers will know the repair shop is closed, while letting in daylight sufficient for Abe to turn down the overhead fluorescents. After a long day's work peering at tiny parts under blinding lights, the gloom and the natural light are a blessing upon Abe's eyes. He sighs, leaning back with the handle of a push broom gripped in his hands. As high-tech as the world was becoming, there were some things that only stood doing by hand. 

"A-Abe-kun?" a voice speaks up, from just beside one of the metal window shades. 

"Mihashi," Abe says, pausing in his sweeping to regard the little robot with tired, drooping eyes. "Is it enough light for you?" 

"I-I'm still not putting much of a strain on my b-batteries," Mihashi says. "So it's alright, I don't need much sun for my solar panels." 

At the reassurance, Abe only narrows his eyes in skeptical disbelief. If he's learned one thing since bringing Mihashi into the shop, it's that Mihashi's programming includes absolutely _no_ directives about truthfulness to his owner, not based on the number of times these little assurances have been outright lies. 

_But no,_ Abe stops himself, _they aren't lies._

"Lies" would imply that Mihashi was misleading him on purpose, and Abe knows just as well that his jittery little android would never willingly do such a thing. Mihashi's programming is entirely geared towards being unobtrusive and polite, towards doing what is asked of him with as little inconvenience to humans as possible. And _that_ is inconvenient all on its own, when Abe makes his business out of working with machines. 

"Do you mind..." Abe starts to say, finishing up sweeping and propping the broom back in its usual place towards the back of the shop's main floor. "...if I look at _that,_ now?" 

"A-Ah," Mihashi says, fluttering his hands in front of himself so that Abe is greeted with a glimpse of all the delicate articulations, the light of the setting sun winking off the polished metal. Many parts of Mihashi have lost their shine, but his hands are the finest thing of all and clever mechanic that Abe is, he can never tire of looking at them. "A-Are you sure, Abe-kun?" 

"It's inconveniencing me as much as it is you," Abe mutters, gruff in the face of Mihashi's nervousness. "I'm only asking because for this, I have to open you up." 

"If you want to," Mihashi says, fidgeting again with his fingers. "Go ahead." 

Abe doesn't do it right away. He takes out a cloth and sets to wiping down the counter along one side of the shop, where the register is and where he sometimes stands to scowl at browsing customers, when he isn't elbows-deep in working on repairs. It's a stalling tactic, getting that gouged and pitted wood anything toward sparkling clean. 

It keeps Abe's hands busy, until he busies them instead with finding his tools and calls over his shoulder to Mihashi, "Come with me." 

He leads the little robot into the back of the shop, where his worktable is laid out properly and where all manner of mechanical apparatuses are displayed about the room. Abe doesn't direct Mihashi to lie back upon the table; instead, he guides Mihashi to the seat _he_ sometimes uses when his back is tired from standing, and sinks himself to the floor in front of Mihashi's feet. 

"Abe-kun," Mihashi protests. "That c-can't be comfortable." 

"What do you know," Abe says. "You're a robot. Would it be uncomfortable for you?" 

For a moment Mihashi has to stop and think about that, never mind that even his antiquated processors should be enough to run that routine in microseconds. Abe takes advantage of the lifelike interlude Mihashi has been programmed with for _thought_ to take a crack at the front panel of Mihashi's chassis, busily removing minuscule screws with the half-sized screwdriver he'd slipped into the palm of his hand. 

"I guess not," Mihashi finally says.

It doesn't matter; Abe has already gotten his chest open and with a nervous, heaving breath, reaches his hands inside. There are some adjustments best conducted when a robot is powered down, so that the changes being made will not interfere with active, in-progress processing. But Abe doesn't have the heart to do that to Mihashi, who has had so much difficulty maintaining a charge before coming to Abe that being shut all the way down is fraught with the fear of _never turning back on._

"Can you feel this?" Abe asks, as his fingertips skate over the circuitry inside Mihashi, following delicate wiring between various subtle bits of Mihashi's construction. Everything inside his chassis is warm, heated from the current flowing through wires and circuits, but not so hot that Abe flinches from the touch. 

"I t-think so," Mihashi says. "Will this make me stop doing... You know?" 

Abe shrugs. Concrete words don't come to him, off-balance as he is watching his hands disappear into the shining guts of Mihashi. He's thought for a while that the storage for Mihashi's language subroutines might be degraded, to account for Mihashi's inefficient turns of speech and very un-robot-like stutter. There isn't much Abe can do to correct that save for issue Mihashi an upgrade, which is a larger change than either of them are yet comfortable making. 

But all of Mihashi is a mess inside, a riot of contradictory construction techniques slapped together as if by three different engineers working at once — and each of them with a varying level of skill, but _none_ of them especially bright. It's such a mess that even though Abe considers himself clever, he doesn't entirely trust himself to correct it. 

"Do you want me to fix it?" Abe asks, staring at all of Mihashi's mechanical insides the likes of which he wishes he could simply... Pull out and rebuild from the ground up. 

"I-I don't know," Mihashi says, staring back at Abe with wide, luminous eyes. 

His face is the most human thing about him, the one concession to luxury of construction besides his hands. Abe thinks sometimes that _Mihashi's_ synthesized features are more expressive than his own, and can't help but laugh, scoffing to himself that even a robot as messed up inside as Mihashi can imitate humanity better than a greasemonkey like Abe does himself. Technology doesn't scare him; it just amazes him sometimes that it hasn't rendered humanity entirely outmoded, when so many of Abe's species are so _awful_ at doing the exact, human things they are supposedly purposed for. 

Abe realizes he's staring at Mihashi's face, caught up in the minute movements of the faux-skin around his eyes, in the way his delicate eyelashes flutter when he blinks. Abe wrenches his gaze away, back to where his hands are touching Mihashi's warm, glowing core from both sides, but doing nothing. 

"Do you want it to be fixed?" Mihashi asks then, too softly. "D-Does it bother you, that I talk like this?" 

"Not really," Abe says, before pulling his hands back from Mihashi's wiring all at once. He snaps the cover on Mihashi's chest decisively closed, and reaches for the screws. "It's just how you're made." 

"But I could be... Made better, couldn't I?" Mihashi asks. 

Abe looks up at him, two little screws between his teeth and his hands lightly touching the warm, smooth metal of Mihashi's front. For a second his lips try to smile, before he has to stop them just to keep the screws grasped by his mouth. 

"Not really," Abe says again, words only lightly mangled by the way he's holding his jaw. "I like you just the way you are." 

Mihashi's hands flutter in front of him, in that way Abe usually hates, close enough to Abe's work that he almost drops a screw. He should be irritated by it, but in that moment he isn't, finds himself feeling instead... Unexpectedly content. There are a lot of faults in the way Mihashi has been built, but there are faults in Abe, too. He reckons, maybe it really _isn't_ so bad, if he doesn't try to fix all of them. 

-

-


End file.
